Mortality Benefit Among Primary Prevention Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator Recipients on Contemporary Heart Failure Treatment.

BACKGROUND: Past clinical trials have shown the benefit of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) for reducing sudden cardiac death in at-risk patients. However, heart failure management and ICD technology have changed since these trials were first published. An updated assessment of ICD mortality benefit is needed. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to compare mortality rates between patients with a primary prevention (PP) indication for an ICD who did or did not receive an ICD using a contemporary, real-world data set. METHODS: Data was obtained from a large electronic health record data set covering patients in the United States from 2012 through 2020 who had a PP indication for an ICD and survived at least 1-year postindication. RESULTS: A total of 25,296 patients were identified as having a PP indication for ICD implantation, of which 2,118 (8.4%) were treated with an ICD within a year. Treated patients were younger than nontreated patients (age 63.4 years vs 66.1 years) with a smaller proportion of women (25.0% vs 36.7%). After 4-to-1 propensity matching, treated patients had similar clinical characteristics to nontreated patients. A Cox proportional hazard model estimated a 24.3% lower risk of all-cause mortality in patients when treated vs not treated with an ICD (HR: 0.757; 95% CI: 0.678-0.835; P <0.001). There was no detectable difference in ICD benefit between patients with ischemic and nonischemic heart disease (P = 0.50). CONCLUSIONS: ICD treatment of patients with a PP indication is associated with improved mortality even in the context of evolving adjunctive HF treatment, consistent with earlier landmark trials.

Guideline-directed device therapies in heart failure: A clinical practice-based analysis using electronic health record data.

Background: Guideline-directed device therapies (GDDT) improve outcomes for eligible patients with heart failure (HF) with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). Utilization rates of device therapies in HFrEF after the 2012 ACCF/AHA/HRS Focused Update for Device-based Therapies of Cardiac Rhythm Abnormalities have not been well studied. Objective: Characterize the use of GDDT in newly indicated HFrEF patients from 2012 to 2019 using aggregated electronic health record (EHR) data. Methods: Computable phenotyping algorithms for implantable cardioverter defibrillator/cardiac resynchronization therapy-defibrillator (ICD/CRT-D) indications from the GuideLine Indications Detected in EHR for Heart Failure program (GLIDE-HF) used diagnoses, procedures, measures, prescriptions, and the output of natural language processed provider notes from de-identified Optum® EHR data. Patients had a diagnosis of HF, dilated cardiomyopathy, or prior infarct, and were included if they had HFrEF with >1 year of records prior to a new Class 1 or Class 2a indication for an ICD or cardiac resynchronization therapy with defibrillator (CRT-D) from 2012 to 2019. Results: Records showed 137,476 HFrEF patients were newly indicated for an ICD or CRT-D. GDDT was used in 14,892 of 36,358 (41.0%) CRT-D indicated patients and in 14,904 of 101,118 (14.7%) ICD-indicated patients. While GDDT use was low, 95.7% had echocardiography and 92.1% had prescriptions for beta-blockers or angiotensin-converting enzyme/angiotensin-receptor blockers medications. Conclusions: In this modern cohort of HF patients, a large proportion of eligible patients did not receive ICDs or CRT-Ds, while frequently receiving other indicated cardiovascular interventions and treatments.